How to Increase the Quality of Health Care?

Photo: HCHE / Claudia Höhne In the new HCHE research training group, 24 doctoral researchers will be training for the next 5 years. For research on improving the quality of health care, the Hamburg Center for Health Economics at Universität Hamburg has created a comprehensive doctoral program. The German Research Foundation will fund this program in the amount of €6 million for the next 5 years. -After the last few years, not least throughout the corona pandemic, in which the quality of health care was not the main issue, we want this research program to strengthen the quality of health care,- explains Tom Stargardt, head of the new Research Training Group Managerial and Economic Dimensions of Health-Care Quality at the Hamburg Center for Health Economics (HCHE). The focus of the research program now being funded by the German Research Foundation is the relationships and impact of different providers (for example, hospitals or doctors), payers (generally insurance agencies), and patients: what quality incentives, for example, do insurance agencies offer in contracts with hospitals or doctors- practices? How does patient conduct when using health services affect the quality of health care? What role do insurance agency offers play? And how does cooperation impact health-care quality? The goal of the research program is to do comprehensive and systematic doctoral work on the changes, such as economic incentives, that can affect health-care quality. Researchers will be using large datasets and new methods.